A lot of Internet Marketers today focus on selling information products such as: e-books, memberships, and downloadable scripts. What about physical products?
Should you or shouldn’t you spend your time and energy doing something such as affiliate marketing for physical products, or setting up your own online dropshipping site to sell products via an online store.
Negatives
• Commission rates can be low.
• Competition is often high.
• Concern over dealing with customer service issues.
Sites like Amazon.com only pay 4% for starters for their affiliates so people might only make a 25 cent sale by referring an Amazon book, CD, or gift item. A lot of effort can be needed to make a first sale on a new website, as most Internet Marketers know.
Positives
The positive thing is that more people than ever buy stuff online so that presents you with a lot of potential customers. There are a lot of different earning programs you can participate in with the physical products business.
For potential customers, knowing they’ll be receiving something tangible in the mail can put that consumer’s mind at ease over pondering the purchase of an e-book and this can help Internet Marketers overcome selling barriers because some people are still ‘old school’ in that they don’t want to pay for information or a download only.
Many sites that offer affiliate programs have several tiers of financial compensation depending on how many sales you make so while your efforts might only net you $17 this month, next month you could hit $18 for the same amount of sales. It might not sound like much but once people buy from you once and are satisfied, they usually come back and they often refer others to you as well.
If you can get a steady stream of traffic and employ good conversion tactics you might develop a steady income stream and most sites you can sell physical products through pay straight commission and don’t require any investment or touching of the physical product as it is all done via dropshipping direct to the end user.
Tips For Finding The Right Product To Sell
Your online success depends on a lot of factors when you’re trying to sell anything on the internet. Here are some considerations:
• How competitive is the niche? If it’s very competitive you may have difficulty getting your site found through traditional means. Instead of a PPC campaign, you may decide that niche article marketing will work better.
• How much demand is there? Look at keyword tools to help you determine how many people are searching for a particular type of product.
• How much will you get paid? You might not focus a whole lot of effort selling $5.00 items with a 4% commission rate. But if you’re selling a $99 item with a 20% commission rate, that could be a little bit more promising for you. Choose products wisely.
• Find a wholesaler instead of a middleman to ensure you’re maximising your profit earning potential.
• Learn all you can about SEO and converting organic traffic to customers.
• Make a squeeze page so you can capture contact information for your marketing list where you can promote to customers and site browsers in future.
While the information products business is hot for Internet Marketers, if you discount the potential of selling shippable products you could be missing out on some great earning opportunities.
About Sean Rasmussen
Selling physical products are harder than digital because it requires a lot more communication and it involves more trust because it involves shipping as well.
digital can be more streamlined and automated. Selling physical goods needs much more infrastructure.
My biggest problems with selling physical projects is handling the shipping. This can be very time consuming and costly. There is much lower overhead with digital products.
Hi Sean,
Some good points there. Personally, I’ve had more success with Adsense than anything else, but I’m just branching out into affiliate products (literally just created a blog to promote a product on Amazon about a week or so ago).
We’ll see how I go. It’s only 4% commission rate, but there is HIGH demand (Zhu Zhu Pets Hamsters) – unfortunately there is HIGH competition as well.
If I’d started a couple of months ago, I would have had a chance – now I’m starting to think I may need to go for something smaller. Wish I’d read your post sooner, although it probably wouldn’t have changed anything – I would have tried it anyway…
Anyway thanks for laying the issues out so clearly.
Hi Steve,
Great to see you getting stuck into affiliate marketing. The best way to get experience and find out what works, is to get into it and have a go. Sure you will have successes and some failures, but if you can learn from your mistakes, it has been a worthwhile experience
Regards – Sean
@Albert: couldn’t agree more. Well said
I will stick to digital products for now. Physical products require shipping and it’s a hassle when customers want to return the product.
-Kai
Hi Kai
Have you considered selling physical products via dropshipping or as an affiliate? Both of these methods of selling online do not require keeping stock or worrying about customer returns as the merchant takes care of that side of things.
Regards – Sean
You have great post with enjoyable writing style. Nice to visit your blog. Thanks for sharing your opinion about online marketing
Hope some of the information helps Tine. Thanks for the compliment.
Hi Sean
I’d heard that drop shipping was pretty competitive and that you need a really good wholesaler How would I track down a wholesaler that would fit the bill?
Relying on someone else could be a bit tricky
Hi Sean,
I guess I don’t want to handle the physical product myself. I would much rather have someone else handle that but I’d be worried about finding a dropshipper that I could trust.
Hi Sean
Yet another great idea to diversify and to create another stream of income. I would be doing keyword research as you suggested and check the market to see what is a good seller.
I like the idea of dropshipping, making sure that I checked the wholesaler out, the product, and got great recommendations. When all the boxes are ticked I would have a go!
It is one thing to say that selling digital products is easier, but the truth is it can be HARD to find a digital product to sell. I’ve had my best results selling physical products, and while I do also sell digital they are much harder to come by than physical. Obviously I would recommend someone sell digital if they could, but not EVERYTHING is digital. What to do? Well, what do you feel most comfortable with and is there something digital that you can make yourself or promote for others? Either way, make sure you focus on providing a good experience for your customer, and they’ll be glad they purchased from you and most likely recommend others to do so.